Free Balance is a Virtual Wallet feature that was new to BBVA migrated customers. It subtracts any expenses that we know about like upcoming transfers and bill payments from your Available Balance. The result gives you a better idea of what you can spend without overdrawing your account.

Normally, customers can start learning about Free Balance as they start using their account. Since their account is new, their Free Balance and Available Balance match because they have not scheduled anything to come out of their account yet. As they begin using their account, they can intuitively see how it changes when they start scheduling transfers and making bill payments.

However, since some items like scheduled bills came over with customers as part of the migration, the first time you see Free Balance, it might not match your Available Balance. This made it necessary to explain Free Balance up front to customers, so that they don’t think that money is missing the first time they come into their new account.

After learning how we calculate Free Balance and clicking next, we wanted users to feel more in control of their scheduled payments, so we listed out the payments brought over for them to review.

If something didn’t seem right, they had the ability to edit that payment and to see how it would change their Scheduled Out and Free Balance.

A Danger Day happens when the payments and transfers that you currently have scheduled exceed the available balance in your account. If users migrated in this state we wanted to provide them options for how to fix the situation before they were charged overdraft fees or had payments returned.

However, sometimes Danger Days can be a false alarm. Our research has shown that many people often schedule their bills for their payday, knowing that money will be deposited on that day to cover them. We added a way for them to add a payday here so that users can also tell us of upcoming deposits that will cover their expenses.

After learning about Free Balance and confirming their bill payments, they are ready to start using their account. Before sending them on their way, we let them know where they can go to learn more about the other tools as they continue to explore the features of their new account.

It is worth noting, that only about 30% of customers came over with any bill payments, so this flow was very short for the most users.

If a user chooses to skip any of the previous steps, they can get back to them from the To Dos section. They will also see other onboarding tasks here like activating their new debit card.

Adding a payday helps us to better calculate your Free Balance by letting us know if your upcoming income will offset any known expenses. When adding your first payday, whether from the first time user flow, or from the To Do list, we give you a brief overview of the benefits before bringing you the add form.

The add a payday form has a number of different options for payday frequency based on our research into how people get paid. It includes robust options for weekly, biweekly, and monthly payments, with the ability to snap to certain days of the month like the 15th or the last day of the month.

The first time a new user navigates to the Virtual Wallet Calendar, we offer them a brief intro about how it can help you visualize your past, present, and future financial situation all in one place. This embedded video explains how the Calendar tracks your upcoming expenses, and how it relates to your Free Balance and Scheduled Out.

Once users are familiar with how Calendar helps them plan for the future, we let them know about the different types of things that they can track including upcoming bills, transfers, as well as how they can add payments that they make outside of our online banking experience.

If users ever want to see this content again, they can get back to it by clicking on the “Learn More” button in the orange subheader. For now they are free to explore and add any new expenses that weren’t moved over for them.